Blue

A simple Google search will show you beautiful islands with perfect white houses with blue round roofs, and yachts thrown around on still blue canvas, all promising a luxurious vacation to remember. My first time in Greece, I carried a backpack and traveled to most places by bus, slept on the floor of a boat going to Crete or at cheap youth hostels, and on the way back to my home country, due the delays and missed trains, spent a night in a carriage in a station in Bulgaria, waiting for the next train to Romania to pick us up. But this is what I tell people when I want to make it sound adventurous. While all of the above is true, that's just half of the story. 

What I remember the most are none of those, but the light and the water.  It was mid-September. I had a camera that I bought several years ago during my time in Italy, and I was taking so many pictures. This was before digital cameras so you never knew if you got the photo you wanted.  You had to wait to develop the film after returning from vacation, hoping. Even if I carefully framed the picture and paid attention to the light and the environment I was photographing, I was often disappointed that the photos did not capture a certain mood,  or nuances of colors the way I remembered them. There were always a few, not the most beautiful, or the most technically correct, it's just that what I could see looking at them was aligned with what I felt the moment I took them. So here it is, my first time in Greece in three photos.

Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, 1997

The first photo  is me sitting on a rock, yellow around, dark blue below, and projecting on the light blue sky above, a few white marble columns, some broken, most of them standing.  This was taken at Cape Sounion, and it is till today the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about Greece. Growing up I was fascinated with the myths of the Ancient Greece, I had a book that I read more times than I could remember. The book had all these cooper and black photos that years later I would realize that they were images painted on amphore. I knew the names of all the gods, the greek names of course. Before going to Greece, I visited Italy, so I was at first disappointed to see how many of the amazing greek temples and statues that I wanted to see where not standing anymore. I remember that from the Temple of Zeus in Athens all left was one broken column spread on the ground as beads from a broken necklace. Maybe that's why the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion impressed me so much, many columns still standing and me so small next to them. But I think that it was the simplicity of the colors, the lack of fancy distracting details, that created such a strong imprint on my memory. Looking up next to the columns the sky, looking straight, the sea. Both blue, but different. 

Knossos Palace, Crete, 1997

In the second photo there is me laughing together with a friend. We are wearing warm jackets and sandals, the wind is blowing my hair you can barely see my face. In the background, some people are drinking beer and cheering realizing they will be in the photo. It is dark, but you can see that we are on a big boat, and can guess that the darkness is actually the sea.  In a few hours we will all be sleeping on the deck to wake up next morning in beautiful Heraklion. That photo was taken on one amazing trip from Pyreus to Heraklion, where I got to see both the sunset and the sunrise, sleeping on the deck, and making new friends. Crete itself was beautiful and unexpected. Beyond the Knossos Palace that I knew so much about from my history books,  Crete has a connection with my other beloved place, Venice.  Several buildings including the Venetian fortress in the port of Heraklion are proof of this connection. 

On top of one of the towers of the Venetian Fortress, Heraklion, 1997

The last photo it's just a frame of a beach and the sea, in late afternoon. The sun is getting ready to set, a few people still thrown around as little dots underneath its weakening light. The perfect time for a swim as the water is still warm while the air is cooling down. By the time I made it to Greece that year, I haven't been in the water in many years and almost forgot how much I enjoyed it. The entire setting was so inviting that every day for a few weeks, I would go swimming at that time of the day.  After long days of running around in the heat visiting lots of places, that little moment in the evening was magical. 

I first visited Greece because of my love for ancient history, but went back for the light and the water.